When Mark Twain died in 1910 at the age of 74, it wasnâ??t the first time. By then he had already been said to have died twice: once due to illness, another time at sea. As he himself said, â??the rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated.â?
Given his literary superstardom, the tabloids clung to anything mildly topical about him. After all this was Twain: widely translated, graciously received by Queen Victoria, Czar Alexander II, Sigmund Freud, friends with Ulysses Grant, Andrew Carnegie. In the middle of his career Twain could count some of the countryâ??s greatest figures as friends and admirers; by the end of it, he was more famous than some of them were. Critic Gerald Martin compares Mark Twain to Gabriel García Márquez: a provincial everyman who reached the heights of fame, one book at a time, to become a political spokesperson. Although reports vary as to how the rumors began, it is clear how they ended: Twain, dead.
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